Pygmalion Vs. Pretty Woman

Summary: The myth of Pygmalion has been appropriated into texts from different cultural contexts. How does each composer you have studied, appropriate this myth to reflect the context of the time in which they were composed?

As a fundamentalist in phonetics, it was hardly surprising that Shaw chose the defining component of his play to be language. Particularly emphasised is the notion that the English people did not speak Standard English. The gentry could be distinguished from the commoners through application of speech. In Act I for example, social lines were drawn between those who spoke `properly' with legitimate grammar, to those with "kerbstone English", one man puzzling Higgins while accusing him of being "a copper's nark, judging by his b -oots" to Eliza's atrocious language deemed "unintelligible outside London." Howbeit Higgins' belittling of her, she proudly insists "I'm a good girl, I am", and encourages Freddy to conceive that she habituates at "Bucknum Palace." Her aspirations of running her own flower-shop motivated Eliza to request speaking lessons from Higgins. Unfortunately he is only interested in his childish muses, "Eliza, Elizabeth, Betsy and Bess...